Chapter V (5)

"Yes, we'll have to go," she assented sadly.

She could not help feeling cross with the Titcombes for always muddling things--a little unjustly, perhaps--for her own missionary path had ever been so easy and untroubled. Mrs. Kirke was a woman of marked beauty, whose sweet imperiousness, sympathy, humor, and tact made her the adored of the islanders. She not only spoke native well, but with a zest and sparkle, a silver ripple of irony, ridicule, and good-fellowship that carried everything before it. No kings ever bothered Mrs. Kirke. Even the redoubtable Tembinok, with forty boats full of armed savages, had been stemmed in his Napoleonic career and turned back by her from his projected invasion of Apiang--presenting the missionary's wife, on his departure, with a gold-inlaid Winchester that was the apple of his eye.

"I shall make Karaitch smart for this!" she said vindictively. "I sha'n't let him off with less than twenty tons of copra for my girls' school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to behave for a year."

"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who would certainly resent being saved so easily.

No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday sun, and the problem of Daisy--Daisy, their little girl of eight, who was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus had just brought her.

"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for weeks and weeks afterwards."

Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a darling little chair!

"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand. "And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows to-day what deviltry and carousing?"

Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.

"Twenty miles over there--three hours," she said at last; "an hour to straighten out the king--four hours; three back, makes seven. That means being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."

Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever, whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she had fainted with the heat--fainted again and again--as they had attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in. Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a nightmare to look back on--never, never to be repeated.

Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good little girl.

"And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you mustn't be the least bit worried about them; and you'll let Nantok put you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little princess!"

"And Dod, too," added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the army as well.

"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!"

Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.

Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were frenziedly searching for their boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never properly answered. Nobody else wore boots--not even the king; but the military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.

At last they arrived, boots and all, a straggling, hobbling party of seven, with cartridge belts and rifles. Little Daisy was formally put in their charge; solemn pledges were given and accepted; a keg of beef, to be subsequently presented, was hedged about with innumerable restrictions. That keg--like liberty--was to be at the price of eternal vigilance. And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor--a coral stone--and set a straight course for Tarawa.

It was a long day--a very long day--quite the longest day in Daisy's tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and the chair. She went out and prattled with the army where they sprawled under the lee of the kitchen, smoking endless _pandanus_ cigarettes. She helped Nantok prepare lunch--a bowl of chocolate made with condensed milk, and hot buttered toast. After lunch she had a nap with Nantok on the mats, and after that again an exciting talk about the great massacre on Tapatuea, where all Nantok's people had been killed during that Kanaka Saint Bartholomew's. Then out to the army again, and checkers, which the army played amazingly well, beating her so often that even this pastime palled. Then----

Oh, what a sigh!

The sleek little seal was aweary, aweary. The house was so empty, so still, and there was such a void in that aching baby heart! She went into papa's room and cried on his bed. He would be drowned in the strait; savage old Karaitch would shoot him with a gun; he would be blown out to sea like Mr. Pettibone the beach-comber. The hot tears scalded her cheeks. She had always liked Mr. Pettibone. Papa called him a proff--proff--proff something, but he had always been so jolly, and his red face and funny little blue eyes rose before her out of the mist. She cried over the lost Pettibone; over Tansy the cat, that had died from eating a lizard; over Nosey, her pet chicken, that Nantok had killed by mistake one night for supper; cried over papa and mamma, far away in the whaler--totaled up all the little sadnesses of her little life, meting out tears to every one. And then, feeling greatly refreshed, she went out on the front porch, and wondered what she should do next.

Down the shore, about a mile away, there were others who found time less heavy on their hands. At the Land We Live In, a one-roomed saloon which catered for a permanent white population of thirteen, and a transient one that varied from a cutter to a full-rigged ship--at the Land We Live In Christmas was being celebrated in a rousing fashion. To begin with, there were the mutineers of the _Lord Dundonald_, twenty-two strong, with plenty of money still to spend. Their revolt against authority had not been without some redeeming features, and an unbiased critic would have found it hard to blame them. After twenty-seven days and nights at the pumps of a four-masted sieve, the Lords had struck in a body, and forced the captain to abandon the ship and set out in three boats for Apiang. Here they double-dyed their crime by compelling the wrathful master to pay them their wages to date, from six hundred and thirty-nine pounds he had taken with him from a vessel he had fondly hoped to pump to China. Captain Latimer, with the three mates, the carpenter, and one of the hands, had sailed away south in the longboat, vowing yardarms and a man-of-war, and when last seen was sinking over the horizon in the direction of the Fiji Islands.

Well, here they all were in the Land We Live In, together with Tom Holderson, Peter Extrum, Eddy Newnes, and Long Joe Kelly, all of Apiang; Papa Benson, of Tarawa; Jones and Peabody, of Big Muggin; and crazy old Jimmy Mathison, of nowhere in particular--unless it were the nearest gin bottle; and it was a rip-roaring Christmas, and no mistake, with bottled beer flowing like water, and songs and choruses and clog dances and hornpipes; and Papa Benson (in earrings and pink pajamas) a-blowing enough wind through his concertina to have sailed a ship. And there were girls, too, seven or eight of them, in bright trade-cotton Mother Hubbards--a bevy of black-eyed little heathen savages, who bore a hand with the trays, and added their saucy laughter to the general gayety, helping out Larry the barkeep as he drew unending corks or stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead, saying, "Genelmen, the drinks is on Billy," or Tommy, or Long Joe, or whoever it was that was treating.

Suddenly, at the door, which had been kept shut to prevent the natives from assembling and peering in--suddenly, at the door, there was heard a faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said "Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"

The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all, lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore, was as startling as it was unexpected.

"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.

There was an embarrassed silence.

"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially, proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"--indicating a giant of a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard--"you are Mr. Bob Fletcher, the ringleader!"

A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of syrup?

"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"

"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.

"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to surprise them when they came back."

A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.

"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes it!"

"Everything for the niggers--that's right," muttered Tom Extrum bitterly, "and not even a six-months-old newspaper for the likes of us!"

"You don't look so werry wicked," said Daisy, taking in the room with a comprehensive glance, and putting an arm around Mr. Bob's neck, as though confident of having at least one friend among the company. "I wonder if you wouldn't all like to come along to my house, and play with my magic lantern, and--and--organize a Band of Hope?"

She was abashed by the roar of laughter that followed the proposal. Papa Benson flung himself on the floor and rolled over and over. Long Joe uttered whoops of delight. Even Mr. Bob shook with speechless mirth, till the veins on his forehead stood out like strings. Never in all its history was there such a hullabaloo in the Land We Live In. As the rumpus died down something very like remorse overwhelmed the roisterers as they saw Daisy's flushing, quivering little face, hot with mortification.

It was Mr. Bob who sprang to the rescue before the brimming tears could fall.

"I'm on!" he shouted, rising to his feet with unexpected enthusiasm. "Now, then, boys, who says 'Aye, aye' for the Band of 'Ope?"

A good part of the crowd would have preferred to stay by their spree; but so contagious is example and so sheeplike the sailor nature, that the whole room fell in with Bob, and answered his call like one man.

He swung Daisy up on his shoulder, where, from that dizzy perch, she looked back shyly at the noisy pack behind her. Secure in the conquest of the ringleader, whom intuitively she felt stronger than the rest, and kinder and more resolute, with a heart beneath his rough exterior as simple and childlike as her own, she managed to keep up her courage in spite of the loud, frightening laughter and the tipsy boisterousness and horseplay that marked the inception of the Band of Hope. Her satisfaction was suddenly checked, however, by the sight of the Kanaka girls joining the procession and making as though to follow.

"No, they mustn't come!" she cried out jealously. "Please, Mr. Mathison, tell them they mustn't come! This is to be for men only!"

"Turn them back!" thundered Bob. "Don't yer 'ear the little lady's _h_orders? Scamper, ye jades!"

Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers, beach-combers, and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty Springfields at all angles. In this fashion they made the missionary's house, swarmed into the neat bare inclosure of coral sand, and invaded the silent rooms.

A terrible irresolution was stealing over Daisy. Twelve slides, representing the wanderings of Saint Paul, began to seem too trifling a means of holding the attention of this enormous and expectant crowd. Besides, it came over her with a shock that she was a little hazy about Saint Paul; and then there were disturbing questions of sheets and darkened windows, and how to make it work. It was with dismay, verging on despair, that she saw the serried ranks of her recruits crowding the room to bursting, and all regarding her with humorous anticipation. But good Mr. Bob, holding her in his lap, and stroking her hair with an enormous red hand, showed a most comforting disposition to himself take the breach. At any rate, he roared for silence; told Mr. Mathison he'd cut his liver out if he didn't belay with them there remarks, and assumed a tone of authority that calmed the tumult of Daisy's misgivings.

"Friends," he said, "and mates, and respected genelmen _h_all, we are here, two and three gathered togetherlike, for the purpose of _h_organizing a Band of 'Ope."

"Local Number One," interrupted Billy Dutton, the donkey-man, who had had some trades'-union experience.

"Band of 'Ope, Local Number One," continued Mr. Bob, receiving the suggestion in an accommodating spirit. "And it is with great pleasure I propose the name of _h_our first president, Miss Daisy Kirke, of Apiang."

Then, my stars, wasn't there a cheer! Daisy hung her head, nestled closer to Mr. Bob, and felt all the joy of good works promptly bearing fruit.

"I don't see no reason," went on Mr. Bob, "why a false modesty, that 'as been my _h_unfailing 'andicap through life, should prevent me from nominating myself as your _h_esteemed vice president. I do not wish to seem a-soaring too 'igh, or reaching out for honors that belong to _h_abler 'eads nor mine; but I'll take the sense of the meeting in a kindly spirit, and will abide peaceable by a show of 'ands!"

When the applause had subsided, Billy Dutton sprang up, and wanted to know "what about a recording seckitary?"

"I don't see no 'arm in the honorable genelman _h_assuming the job 'isself," said Mr. Bob, "if 'e thinks 'e's sufficient of a speller, and won't run the band into 'orrible extravagances for 'igh-priced wines and luxuries. The assessments of this band is going to be low, and the diet plain. Who says Brother Dutton ain't the man for the place? Is it you, Mr. Riley, I see raising your fist agin him? Oh, only to ax a question. Well, one thing at a time, Brother Riley. Does the meeting _h_endorse Mr. Willum Dutton for recording seckitary?"

The meeting did, vociferously and with cheers. Daisy ran and got her slate for the recording seckitary, who thereupon (after first inscribing the names of the office bearers in a shaky print) began to draw a wonderful picture of a pirate ship.

"Afore listening to the plans of our valued president," said Mr. Bob, "I propose myself to _h_offer up a few general remarks on 'Ope! Me and 'Ope is old friends, genelmen. We set sail together from the port of London, 'Ope and I, when I was a bright-faced boy that 'igh! We've bunked in together, fair weather and foul, coming on this thirty year. We 'ave set in our time, me and 'Ope, on the bottom of a capsized schooner, ore laden out of Mazatlan, with our tongues 'anging out like the tails of some vallyble new kind of a black dorg. 'Ope and I took the Chainy coast once on a chicken coop. 'Ope and I, when we 'ad the dollars, blew them in right royal. 'Ope and I, when we 'adn't none, tightened our belts and cheered each other _h_up. Looking back over all them years, I want to stand _h_up and testify right 'ere to the best friend of the sailorman, bar none, and p'r'aps the _h_only one he ever truly 'ad--and that's 'Ope, God bless her!"

Amid the ensuing uproar, which jarred the walls of that prim missionary residence like an explosion of dynamite, spilling plates off dressers and cock-billing texts, and arresting the astonished clock at four forty-six, little Daisy was trying to nerve herself to address the assembled company. The unforeseen docility of the band had put new ideas in that sleek, baby-seal head. Odds and ends of tracts and storybooks recurred to her. Infantile ambitions awoke and clamored. But it was daunting, just the same, to confront those rows of eyes, and those great big, unshaved, shaggy-looking faces, all keenly waiting for her to speak.

"Now, then, little lady," said the vice president, "'ere's your Band of 'Ope, a-panting to set its 'and to the plow!"

Daisy cleared her throat. Pride and timidity struggled with each other in that eager little countenance. Had it not been for an encouraging squeeze from Mr. Bob, who knows but what she might have burst into tears, and disgraced herself before the whole band. But the squeeze, coming exactly at the right time, averted so mortifying a catastrophe.

"My dear friends," began Daisy, catching with unconscious mimicry some of the rounded tones of her father's voice--"my dear, kind friends!"

"Well, go on," cried Mr. Bob; "that's a swell start! That's the way to wake them up!"

"Hear! hear!" (This from a dozen places.)

"I have called you togevver," went on Daisy bravely, "so we might enjoy the travels of Saint Paul, which belongs to the magic lantern Santa Claus brought me this morning for Christmas, because I'm such a good little girl. Saint Paul was a kind of a sailor, too, and got shipwrecked, like Mr. Bob, in an awful storm. I used to know all about Saint Paul, but somehow I've got mixed up about him since. Perhaps one of our members will oblige, so we'll know what the slides are about when we get _w_ound to them?"

There was a profound silence. No one volunteered. Billy Dutton, looking up from the pirate ship, to which he was adding some finishing touches, said he was afeared the president would find them a sad, ignorant lot of ignorpotammusses.

"Then we'll just have to get along without Saint Paul," said Daisy regretfully. "Perhaps it is as well, too, for Bands of Hope isn't only for amoosement, but to do good, and help uvvers, and carry the glad tidings right and left into the darkest corners of the earth."

"Gee-whilikins!" exclaimed Sammy Nesbit, "where's this we're fetching up to, mates?"

"Silence! _H_order! Shut your face! Dry up, there, Sammy!" roared the Band of Hope.

"I was finking," went on the president, confidentially and undisturbed, "why a nice little surprise for papa wouldn't be as good an idea as any. It's an awful long way to Tarawa and back, and papa's never been werry strong since the fever he got in New Guinea, before he married mamma with Mr. Chalmers."

"Wot sort of a surprise _h_exactly?" asked the vice president with an expression of some doubt.

"Putting up mottoes _w_ound the walls," returned Daisy, "and green branches and palm leaves and texes and Merry Christmas, like grandpapa's in Devonshire, when I was a little tiny winy girl. And papa will be so pleased and happy and surprised that I know he'll just love it, and won't never feel tired at all!"

The Band of Hope, who seemed given to singular and inextinguishable fits of laughter, promptly went off into another paroxysm; and laughter with the Band of Hope was no drawing-room performance, no polite titter behind an upraised hand. When the Band of Hope laughed, it rolled on the floor, beat its clenched fists against neighboring backs, screamed, huzzaed, cat-called, kicked pajama legs in the air, and shook the pictures off the walls. Mr. Bob seemed to be the only one who knew how to behave, but even Mr. Bob grew crimson in the face, and choked, and opened his mouth till you could see way down his froat.

"Genelmen," he said, when at last he had somewhat recovered, "you've listened to our _h_orders, and I'll _h_only remind you that them that _h_ain't with us is agin us, as Saint Paul says. Back-sliders and goats may return to the bar, but me and the fleecy sheep is agoing to see this thing through, and do our dooty _h_under the regilations by Board of Trade _h_appointed. Goats, as I said afore, will kindly rise and step out!"

"We ain't no blooming quitters," spoke up Billy Dutton. "Goats, nothing, you wall-eyed old ram! You want to cinch all the texes for yesself, and make a running with our lovely president. But we are on to you, Bob Fletcher, and I voice the sentimomgs of the whole band when I says with Saint John, in the forty-first epistle to the Proosians, 'Wot you put your fist to, that do it with all yer might!'"

"Aye, aye!" chorused the band with boisterous approval.

"Then _h_up and work, you devils!" exclaimed the vice president. "Pull out that table, Mack; and you, there, bear a 'and to 'elp 'im, 'Enery. Set _h_up the little chair, Williams! Easy with Saint Paul, you, Tommy, or you'll crack him sure--and lay the whole caboodlum on the shelf, _h_out of 'arm's way! Lively, lads--lively!"

Bob lifted Daisy in his arms, and carrying her to the table, installed her comfortably in the little chair.

"Captain's bridge," he said; "and if anything ain't right, or just _h_according to your _h_idears, you sing out to the lower deck, loud and 'earty; only mind you don't get _h_excited and spill orf!"

Daisy's eyes danced, and her timidity all vanished as she saw the jovial and obedient band grouping together and hotly discussing the proposed decorations. Distances were measured with tarry thumbs. A party of six was told off to climb the cocoa palms across the road; while another, shouting and hallooing like schoolboys, was dispatched to Holderson's station to get sinnet. There was a noisy wrangle over spelling. "I never seed it like that," said one, squinting over Billy's slate, "and I don't believe nobody else ever did neither." "For the love of Mike," roared another, "let's stick to them words we're all agreed on, and keep off of that thorological grass!" "Man and boy, I've been to sea this thirty years," exclaimed Mr. Bob with crushing vehemence, "and there warn't no T in Christmas then, and there ain't now! C-R-I-S-S-M-A-S, you son of a sea cook, and I know _h_every letter of it like the palm of me 'and!"

In a corner, dispassionately aloof from all the bustle and argument, Papa Benson, that venerable dandy of the pink pajamas, pumped up the concertina, and drew melodiously on his ancient repertoire. To the inspiring strains of "In Her Hair She Wore a White Camellia," "Oh, Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out To-night?" and the "Mulligatawny Guards," the good work progressed with sailorlike speed and system. The bare, dreary room grew gay with greenery. Stitched to the matting walls with sinnet there appeared letters, words, and finally complete inscriptions: PEAS ON ERTH AND GOODWILL TOWARDS MAN; DAISY KIRKE, THE SEAMAN'S STAR; MERRY CRISSMAS, and GOD BLESS OUR HOM.

Daisy clapped her hands with delight, and did not stint her praise or approval. Occasionally she would stand up on the "bridge" to anxiously point out a crooked letter, or call attention to a doubtful spelling; and her little heart overflowed with satisfaction at the brisk "Aye, aye, Miss!" that greeted her smallest criticism. Mr. Bob worked like a horse, and not only made things jump, but kept a sharp watch as well on the unguarded utterances of his mates. Once, at some remark of Mr. Tod's, he flared up like a lion, and stepping close to Mr. Tod, with his fist clenched, said, "Drop that, Toddy--d'ye 'ear--drop it!" and stared at him so fierce and splendid, that Mr. Tod fell back and mumbled something about "No offense," and "It kinder ripped out unbeknownst, Bob, old cock!"

By the time it was all finished dusk was falling. The room had been beautifully swept out, and likewise the porch, and Mr. Bell was in the act of dancing a fascinating clog to Papa Benson's "Soldier's Joy" on the concertina, when Nantok rushed in, shouting that Mr. Kirke was coming. And, indeed, she had no sooner given the news than it was confirmed by the whaler's crew, whose voices could be heard far across the water, lustily singing at their paddles.

A sort of consternation descended on the Band of Hope. "Hell!" exclaimed Mr. Dutton, and dropped his broom with a crash. There was a mad scurry to escape. The little president was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, quiet and masterful even in that panicky moment of the missionary's return, came up to her, and taking her hand in both his own, nuzzled it long and lovingly against his cheek.

"Little Daisy," he said, and his voice sounded kind of strange and different, "I want you to give a message to your pa--a message from me, you say to 'im--and that is, 'e'll never 'ave no more trouble with the boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any lip, or 'oots--you tell 'im this, Daisy--I'll break every bone of 'is body, so 'elp me, Moses. And it _h_ain't because of 'im, or anythink the like of that, but because he's the father of the darlingest little gal that _h_ever breathed, and the sweetest and the dearest."

Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him; and as her face pressed his, rough as mahogany and hairy as a mat, she felt it all wet with tears.

Daisy was still wondering what it was that could make Mr. Bob cry, when he suddenly let her go, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy, lurching sea walk, looking straight before him, and unheeding the "Happy Noo Year, Mr. Bob!" she called after him in a pitiful little voice.

"Poor Mr. Bob!" said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!

"He must have stole it for a keepsake when I was kissing him!" she exclaimed. "Oh, you bad, bad Mr. Bob!"

But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and mamma.

OLD DIBS

His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways, with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in. Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till you'd think he'd melt!

He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps. He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money that he had and threw around so regardless.

My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we had he was welcome to--and if not too long--for nothing. He seemed pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?

Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed, and opened beer.

"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.

"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.

"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men of the British bark _Wolverine_, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals, where they were cast away."

"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.

"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.

"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the day on one of the trunks.

I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even the way he sighed.

Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!

Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb chops just by telling ourselves it was so!

I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame to him for that, the Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his trunks.

Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him a little about the house."

"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."

I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No; he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one of his trunks (_the_ trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk, or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!

At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't give a whoop, the one way or the other.

And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop, and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.

He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult things seemed to despise _him!_ But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession. The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him unabated.

Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy to get out of view.

Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it; and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father! It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.

Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too, for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah was to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and make him pleased.

We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.

I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes--watched him for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet, and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to be afraid of me than me of _him_. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.

He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want me to know it. So I got out of bed--if you can call a stack of mats and a schooner's topsail a bed--and lit out to see what was doing. It was no good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close, and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my knees at the sill, taking in the performance.

The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open, with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen them, haven't you?--the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room, yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something harder than paper--something that would take both his hands to lift--and it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.

Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.

You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he got out and added to the others.

Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.

Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs, and how good I was going to be to him.

When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is, seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it had been Lima beans.

Then--to get along with my yarn--he took the comforter off the bed, and setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat back in the rocker and rocked--me still glued at the winder--and he reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him, took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.

This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom; but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?

Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I didn't want no others to harm him neither.